In fact, there is still a big gap in the manpower required for these projects alone.

With the news of free labor, the remaining errands of the Ministry of Industry have become very popular employment errands.

Whenever the Ministry of Industry was building water conservancy projects in various places, it only needed to post a notice outside the local government office, and all the required labor could be recruited within the same day.

The road that Cai Dao ordered to build was not a cement road, and that thing was only a small factory on Yizhou Island, the overseas territory of the Cai family, and it was not promoted in the Great Song Dynasty except for the salt pans along the coast. It's not a gallop road built by the Qin Dynasty, so it's too wasteful of manpower and material resources.

It is the so-called road in later generations, which was designed by the English Scotsman John Macadan in the late eighteenth century, using gravel to pave the road, the middle of the road is high, easy to drain, and the road surface is flat and wide.

Crushed stone is very easy to make, and now in the territory of the Great Song Dynasty, there are wide rivers in the north and south, as well as mountainous areas, are preparing and using water conservancy to prepare the gravel used in these road construction.

The Cao Gang's boats became the main force for transporting these worthless but very strategically important items. Of course, this is also a piece of chicken ribs that Cai Dao threw to the Cao Gang, and he just wants to use the trade of transporting gravel to the north to strangle this huge gang, so that it will not starve to death, and it will not let it get greater development because of this.

Of course, this kind of road is not as durable as a concrete road, but it is easy to build and requires very few heavy tools.

Such a large-scale construction of roads on the Song-Liao border, inside and outside the court of the Great Liao State, the Nanjing Mansion of the Liao State had already reported the matter to Yelu Hongji.

But this faint monarch and most of the civil and military ministers are not worried about this, including the later emperor of the Western Liao Kingdom, Yelu Dashi.

Except for Han Shusheng, a Liao State spy who has been paying attention to Cai Dao, everyone else thinks that Cai Dao and the entire Great Song Dynasty are making fools.

As we all know, the Liao State has a large number of iron cavalry and the speed of the march is extremely fast, while the Great Song State is extremely short of war horses, and the most elite forbidden army is also dominated by infantry.

If the Great Song Kingdom really dared to start a war with the Great Liao State, even if the Great Song Dynasty adopted the method of sneak attack, the forbidden army marched from Bianliang City to the front. Once there were these flat roads, when the Song army had not yet crossed the Yellow River, the iron cavalry of the Great Liao State had already approached the Daimyo's mansion, and even drank the Yellow River.

Isn't that stupid, what is that doing?

There are also many people of insight in the Great Song Kingdom, and when they learned that Cai Dao was building these roads, they wrote to advise the two masters of the harem on this matter, but all these twists and turns were left unpublished, and there was no news.

This is the trust of the Empress Dowager and Empress Meng in Cai Dao, although it is a little blind, there can be too many facts, which has proved Cai Dao's foresight.

Thinking that at the beginning, Cai Daoli overrode public opinion and personally led some miscellaneous soldiers in the south to go on the expedition, breaking through Shenglong City, the capital of the Great Yue Kingdom, which had not even arrived at the 300,000 forbidden troops, and captured its lord Li Qiande and the culprit Li Changjie.

At that time, there were many people who opposed it, including Guo Zhongxiao, the apparent commander of the Southern Expeditionary Army, who was also the initial opponent.

Taking advantage of the usurpation of the throne of the Gao clan of Dali, he took one-third of the territory of Dali in one fell swoop, and made Dali truly a subject of the Great Song Kingdom. The troops, money, and rations it used were not even as good as the number of standing troops that had been deployed on the Liao border.

At that time, many people objected, and it turned out that Cai Dao was still right.

Moreover, Cai Jing, Zhang Shuye, and Zong Ze, who had been in the north, not only did not write a letter to oppose Cai Dao's decision like others, but made great efforts to assist him in completing the project as soon as possible.

Zhang Shuye and Zong Ze did not object, because Cai Dao had already informed the two of them of his plan.

But Cai Jing made his own decision. Compared with Cai Bian, Cai Jing's experience and achievements in military affairs and local administration are much worse.

With the help of the seed master, Cai Bian was very successful in the Yanyan Road, and now he has even surpassed the envoys of other roads in the northwest, and his military exploits are second only to Zhang Qi.

Because, he knew that his nephew's next target must be the Liao people, the sixteen states of Youyun, or more precisely, Youzhou. Because, once the Great Song Kingdom took Yanshan and Yuguan into its own hands, then Yunzhou, which was the Datong of later generations, became a completely isolated island.

Moreover, with Taiyuan Mansion in front of him, and the elite Fuzhou Folding Army next to him, the entire Hedong Road can be defended without sending troops at all. If the Liao army of Yunzhou acted rashly, the Zhejia army would definitely not let it or abandon Yunzhou, send troops to rescue Youzhou, or send a large army to attack Taiyuan Mansion to relieve the military pressure on Youzhou.

With such a judgment, Cai Jing also put out the idea of returning to the center temporarily, and he put all his main energy on the official duties of the Hebei two-way transfer envoy, and he completely handed over the government affairs of the Daimyo's Mansion to the general judgment to be responsible.

After blocking the attack of the Western Xia Kingdom and taking Hengshan, Cai Jing had already seen that Cai Dao did not mean to destroy the Western Xia Kingdom in one fell swoop.

Therefore, once the Great Song Kingdom really has to recover the Sixteen Prefectures of Youyun, then the credit of his two-way transfer envoy will be ironclad, far exceeding all the merits that the second brother has made now.

In the second and a half years of Yuanfu and two years of Tianyou, in these two and a half years, the Great Song Kingdom ushered in an explosive growth in terms of economy, population, and military strength, and these three aspects were very obvious in the north.

Perhaps it was because Sun Jue, Cai Xuan, Zhang Shuye, and Zong Ze were in Chang'an Mansion that the management of the Wei River, Jing River, and Beiluo River basins really had an effect, and in the past two and a half years, not only were the wind and rain in the north smooth, and there were few natural disasters, but also the floods that had been raging in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River did not occur.

Four things about people's livelihood, food, clothing, housing and transportation.

For the first time, farmers who had been living in the northern lands were actually stuffing their warehouses with enough food to feed them for three years. Even so, the price of grain in the north has not decreased much because of this, because Cai Dao has very strict control over the regular liquidation of land, and there is no landlord class in the north, and there are no big grain merchants.

Therefore, the government has become the largest and only grain merchant in the entire north, and Cai Dao spent a lot of money to buy the surplus grain in the hands of the people, just to reserve grain for the relocation of the capital and the battle of Song and Liao.

With regard to other areas of diet, the lives of the people have also improved a lot.